


All The Things Unknown

by intentioncraft



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Asexual Dean, Gen, M/M, Magician/Apprentice AU, Minor Character Death, Past Abuse, Violence, alternating pov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2791208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentioncraft/pseuds/intentioncraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester is unlike Cain's previous apprentice in every mentionable way, but Cain wonders if that must be for the better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Bartimaeus series and some photos of Timothy Omundson at a con where he looks a bit like a sorcerer. Goes with [this verse](http://intentioncrafts.tumblr.com/post/102797801238/dean-cain-magician-apprentice-au-a-knight-is-no). Crossposted to [tumblr](http://intentioncrafts.tumblr.com/post/105467550458/dean-cain-magician-apprentice-au-4k-pg-13).

"You know, it isn't truly legal for you to wear that ring.”

Cain watches his new apprentice twirl the thick silver ring around and around on his fourth finger. Etched symbols catch the firelight, faint grooves that appear to have been worn down by time and Dean’s fingers. Cain’s own ring is not nearly as weathered as this one, so he wonders where it came from, who it belonged to before it belonged to Dean.

Dean ignores him, stares at the fireplace and continues to rotate the ring with his thumb.

Cain tries again.

“If you weren't instated before you left your previous master then the state doesn't recognize you as a magician yet. You could be charged with fraud.”

At that, Dean looks up for a brief moment to meet Cain’s gaze, eyes alive for the first time since Cain looked into them as he read the rites that would bind Dean to him as his apprentice, to his home, to his reputation, for as long as Cain deemed necessary, and still then until the state decided it was safe to release Dean on his own.

And given the weight of Dean’s crime, it would be a long time before that happened.

“They gonna arrest me?”

At twenty-eight he’s more than twice the minimum required age for an apprentice and almost a full decade past the age most apprentices achieve status, but Cain has no doubt that he surpasses most of the official magicians with whom he’d come into contact since he’d been arrested. He’s also tall with heavy, working shoulders, a day or two of stubble on his jaw, and he speaks coarsely with a faint pastoral accent. Since Cain first heard him speak, his words have been barbed with bitterness and grief.

He hasn’t touched his tea, either. He made a face at it, though.

Dean Winchester is unlike his previous apprentice in every mentionable way, but Cain wonders if that must be for the better.

 

—

 

Dean brings with him very few things.

The ring, which Cain doesn't ask about again. Dean appears to be perfectly aware that he isn't entitled to what it means, but he also doesn't seem open to taking it off so Cain only hopes that he’ll exercise the good sense to remove it when he takes his first state exams.

A car that he's now forbidden by law to drive anywhere without Cain’s permission. It's large, black, angular and evidently well-loved. Out of the trunk Dean hefts a dark beige duffel, very military in a way that Cain feels uncomfortable with. Dean throws the duffel down on the bare mattress in the spare room Cain cleaned out. There's a small dresser in the corner but two weeks go by and Dean is still living out of the duffel bag.

The journal. Dark brown leather scuffed and smoothed, rag-like snippets hanging over the edges and paper clips, staples, tape, holding the whole thing together, like a sculpture. Dean keeps it on his bedside table and carries it with him to lessons, flips through it during lectures, consults it during study. Sometimes he writes, although at a glance the pages look crammed with handwriting and diagrams already.

Cain asks if he might look at it, since Dean seems to rely on it for much of his work. A useful starting point to address some of Dean's gaps, and better navigate his style.

Dean curtly tells him no.

It doesn’t take much assessment, anyway, for Cain to discern that there isn't a lot that Dean isn’t familiar with. After all, a magician can't even call upon a spirit as powerful as Abaddon without knowing some advanced techniques that wouldn’t be found in any publicly sanctioned tomes, but when Cain asks Dean straightaway to recreate the spell he used to summon her, he simply chews his lip and stares at the clean sheet of paper in front of him, picks up the pen Cain placed on the desk and then catapults it at a wall.

"I'm not telling you shit."

So Cain slams down a copy of _Elementary Demonology and Arcane Rituals_. Dust breathes out of the pages from not having been touched since Cain’s first apprentice, "Then you will start at the beginning."

Dean looks up at Cain through his eyelashes, flips open the book none too gently, and begins reading chapter one.

 

—

 

"Abaddon is no common spirit, so a common arsenal of binding spells won’t be of any use against her," Cain explains and pours Dean more tea, who sits across the desk from Cain with one leg casually thrown over the other, “It’s no wonder she was able to break through yours.”

"My spells aren’t common," Dean snaps.

Cain strokes his beard with two fingers, considering the many angles to Dean’s belligerence, and replies, “Don’t get me wrong, Dean. You have a reputation, even if you work apart from the law and _far_ apart from what’s generally considered safe and orthodox. You’re a capable magician. But Abaddon was still above your reach.”

Dean leans forward and uncrosses his legs, puts his elbows on his knees, looks to the right at nothing in particular. He says nothing, too, no denial, no rebuttal, no confession.

“She’s beyond all our reaches,” Cain adds, hoping to ease some of Dean’s guilt. Public opinion wishes to see Dean hanged. A magician attempting to summon a spirit beyond his power is a common mistake. Typically, that spirit devours the magician and retreats to the spirit world, and people mourn the magician’s lost life as a tragedy of hubris.

But Abaddon caused an explosion that took with it four city blocks, sparing Dean but killing and injuring dozens. The public is calling for Dean’s execution. Cain doesn’t own a television, but he doesn’t feel right throwing out the daily newspaper and closing Dean off from the world entirely.

“So we’re just gonna let her do her thing, huh?” Dean says, “Wait for the state to come up with an idea to stop her? How many more do you think she’ll wipe the floor with till somebody gets her?”

“That’s not what I said,” Cain clenches his jaw, “I don’t have a lot of faith in the state on this, either. But if anybody has a shot at stopping Abaddon from continuing her rampage, we need to first understand how you were able to summon her in the first place.”

It’s the first time since he’s moved in that Cain has broached the subject. Ten days into Dean’s studies and they’ve already moved on to advanced demonology and summoning techniques, which isn’t the only thing that they’ve been making quick progress on. Dean’s knowledge of history is deeper than Cain expected, although his politics are rudimentary (emphasis on rude). Dean’s Latin is also fairly well developed if rough and inconsistent on the pronunciation for lesser used words.

He even shows an interest in learning music, something that most magicians only teach in order to show apprentices the values of discipline and repetition. Cain obliges him and Dean takes up the piano with concealed enthusiasm.

Apart from occasional resistance, Dean is efficient and hardworking, but still quiet and surly, letting some carefully contained anger get the better of him at times.

“If you think I’m going to show you how to summon that demon for yourself, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Cain raises an eyebrow at Dean.

“Sorry,” Dean adds hastily. He drags his palm down his mouth, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. Accusing a magician of something like that with no evidence to back it up does nothing but cause social conflict. And, as you know, social conflict between magicians is often solved by one or the other being murdered in his sleep,” Cain explains.

Dean’s face reddens from the chastising but once Cain is finished, Dean seems to relax in his seat, “Back to the matter at hand — I don’t believe that any magician stands a chance against Abaddon, except perhaps you, the person who managed to summon her to a specific location and survive the ordeal.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here,” Dean says, throwing his leg over the other again and leaning back in his chair.

“Somewhat. I don’t think you can bind Abaddon until you learn the precise nature of what she is, where she came from, how her essence is structure. And I believe I can help you there.”

 

—

 

It only takes three weeks for Dean to run off for the first time, and then it only takes three hours for Cain to find him again.

“He’s at _Crowley’s_ , run by some slime-ball named Crowley of course. Doing that thing that humans do – drinking away your sorrows?” the spirit name Cecily twirls a piece of hair between her fingers. Spirits are typically cheeky, but Cecily seems to be of the more agreeable stock. She did as she was asked with no argument, eager to get back to the spirit realm and get the stink of the mortal plane out of her essence. Cain dismisses her as promised and then takes his own car out to go find Dean.

He’s perched on a bar stool, smiling at a young woman with dark curly hair who’s too busy flirting with a pretty redhead to even notice Dean’s half-sober winks in her direction. And, yes, drinking away his as of yet untold sorrows.

Cain walks through the bar, squeezing by patrons with soft _excuse me_ s and _sorry_ s that are drowned out by hushed whispers and gasps as people recognize who he is or, rather, what he is. He’s heard about a growing population of commoners being able to sense magical power like some kind of aura, seeing deeper across the planes than most magicians without the help of special lenses, but he never knew there could be so damned many in one place. It can’t be a coincidence.

He ignores the frantic voices behind him and says Dean’s name loud enough that it makes the man jump sluggishly.

Dean cranks his neck and looks at Cain over his large shoulder, eyes glassy, cheeks shiny and red, and then turns back to the bartender, “Another one, Crowley,” he doesn’t even acknowledge Cain’s presence, the whispers behind Cain rise into a mild, but still hushed, panic.

“Best be off, Winchester. Your master’s calling,” the bartender is round faced, receding hairline and an accent that slips along like an oil spill. He’s keeping both eyes on Cain, eyes bugging out of his head as sweat beads along his forehead.

“I don’t have a goddamned _master_ ,” Dean spits as he taps the side of his glass. The bartender shakes his head jerkily at him.

“Sorry, cupcake. You’re done.”

“I’m not even close to done.”

“Like I said, your master is here,” Crowley enunciates slowly, making sure it’s loud and clear to Cain that he doesn’t support Dean’s insolence. He even gives Cain a quivering _can-you-believe-this?_ smile. Cain frowns at him. He doesn’t like the way Crowley simpers.

Crowley goes back to looking seconds away from wetting himself, and hisses at Dean, “I am _not_ about to piss him off by letting you stay in _my_ bar. Get out, now.”

Dean swears loudly and shoves away from the counter without paying for his drinks, patrons tensing and some even exclaiming in alarm as he barrels past them and ignores Cain completely. All Cain can do is sigh, throw some money beside Dean’s empty glasses, and nod at the bartender. Crowley’s eyes bug out of his head some more but he snatches up the bills immediately as Cain follows Dean out of the bar.

It’s frigid out, the first calls of winter. Dean walks down the sidewalk with his hands in his pocket and his collar turned up to the chill.

Cain realizes then that Dean didn’t take his car with him.

It doesn’t take long to catch up to Dean once he starts his car and pulls up next to him and rolls down the window, takes his foot almost off the gas to match Dean’s quick pace. Dean turns his head to look at him but doesn’t stop walking, “I just needed to get out, okay?” he says. His voice is tight, braced for impact.

Cain checks the road to make sure he’s not going to hit anything, “Dean, I understand that you’re an adult and you’re used to doing things on your own, but if you had been caught by the police the terms of your apprenticeship would have been broken and you would have wound up in _prison_.”

“Nobody there would have turned me in.”

Cain recalls the squirmy, tense feeling of walking into a bar full of resilient commoners, their anger and fear like a stench. He remembers the way Crowley looked about two seconds away from twitching towards the phone if Dean only turned his back long enough, “You don’t know that. Opportunists lurk everywhere, not just among magicians,” Cain says.

Dean’s hmphs, which means he doesn’t have a good enough rebuttal, and he keeps walking. It isn’t quite raining but there’s a mist on the air that shimmers every time he passes a streetlight. It sticks to his face.

“I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

“I don’t need you to keep me safe,” Dean fires back, “I know how to take care of myself.

“I’m very aware of that, but you still need protection, from Abaddon and from the state, and I’m legally bound to provide it.”

“Nobody asked you to.”

“I _want_ to. Dean, I don’t take on any apprentices for a reason. But I wanted _you_.”

Dean stutters in his step, barely noticeable but forcing Cain to touch the brakes as he realizes how that sounds.

“I didn’t —”

A resigned noise escapes Dean, partway between a laugh and a sob, an honest sound. Cain feels a pang of regret for whatever dusty memories he’d just kicked up.

An apology will get him nowhere, but it’s the only thing he can say, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, sure.”

He sighs and stares ahead, at the street. This won’t be easy, what he has to confess to Dean. He never expected it to be easy, but it is necessary if they’re to make any progress. Dean’s trust is not something Cain will gain; it’s something he must earn.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he says slowly, fingers curling over the steering wheel, the weight of his ring cold and tight on his finger, “About Abaddon. And about me.”

It’s enough, it draws Dean back in. And when Cain tells him all about his first apprentice and what she became through her cleverness and his audacity as her teacher, Dean’s expression rises and falls in waves: disbelief and skepticism, uneasiness, fury, revulsion. It’s all he expected from Dean, and all he deserves from anyone.

When he brings his confession back to the present, to the moment he saw Dean from the courtroom gallery when he made up his mind to take another apprentice, Dean’s smiling again, cruel satisfaction, grim triumph.

He’s also decides to get in the passenger seat of Cain’s car instead of walk all the way back to Cain’s home in the cold drizzle, “Knew you were the same as the rest,” he wipes his damp face with his sleeve, “Magicians just can’t resist fucking around with power like that.”

“It seems to be our fatal flaw,” Cain replies.

Dean scoffs and turns to look out the passenger window, neither confirms nor denies that he, too, is one of those magicians.

Cain pulls away from the curb, and then says pointedly, “Seatbelt.”

“It’s six miles.”

“Do up your seatbelt, or we can debate the ethics of indefinite confinement spells tomorrow. You can argue for.”

“Fuck that, there is no _for_.”

For the first time, Dean’s vulgarity coaxes a faint smile out of Cain, “You’d better do up your seatbelt, then.”

 

—

 

“These are…not standard binding runes.”

In fact, they’re borderline heretical, criminal. Dean’s summoning array is unlike anything Cain’s ever seen. There’s the pentacle, which is the only familiar shape to Cain, and then there’s a tornado of reckless, dangerous magic locked in with confinement spells and a series of strange triangular shapes that Cain can’t decipher.

“They work,” Dean says simply. Cain believes him.

“Where did you learn this?” he puts his finger on the unknown rune, smudges the fresh ink from Dean’s pen by accident.

Dean makes a face at the streaked rune and snatches his diagram back before Cain can do any more damage to his work.

“Did you make it up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did you learn it?” he asks again.

Dean’s tone is balanced, guarded, “It doesn’t matter. It works. That’s what summoned Abaddon.”

Cain knows who Dean’s first and only master was: a man named Alastair. Alastair was of severe elegance. Traditional but not without an appreciation for innovation, invention. Cain’s only met Alastair a half dozen times at various social functions. The few times they spoke, never at length, Cain only recalls an overall impression of something slick and not so secretly barbed.

Alastair disappeared about a decade ago, house empty, no remains. Most assume that he overstepped himself during a summoning and was consequently devoured by a spirit. An ordinary death for an ordinary magician, but Alastair was _not_ of ordinary calibre. And after meeting Dean and putting together the pieces of his timeline, Cain no longer believes the accepted story.

Dean’s scribbling something on the back of his diagram. When Cain peers over Dean’s shoulder to look, he sighs. It’s a crude doodle of a succubus.

Cain feels a tightness around his mouth, possibly a smile, as he gently flips the page back over and hovers a pointed finger over the triangular runes.

“Can you tell me what this does.”

“Alteration,” Dean says, “Adjusts the properties of your spell so you can use whatever shit—”

“Dean.”

“Sorry. Whatever _supplies_ you have _at your disposal_. So you don’t get your intestines sucked out through your eye sockets by a cocky imp.”

Cain removes his fingers to stroke his beard. Dean picks up the pen again and re-outlines the parts of his array that Cain smudged, leaving the rest of his explanation hanging so Cain has to ask.

“Why in the world would you even attempt a _minor_ summoning without the proper ingredients?”

Dean shrugs and keeps his eyes focused on the page, pen audibly scratching deep into the thick paper, “Sometimes you gotta improvise.”

Innovation, invention. Those were Alastair’s two most favourite things.

His third most favourite thing, Cain learned after only a few short conversations with the man, was traumatizing apprentices. _Sink or swim_ , he used to say. _That’s the way_. _Learn to dance, or break both ankles_.

 

—

 

Dean drops the plastic grocery bag onto the desk and pulls his notes out of his jacket pocket, folded into messy quarters. Cain peers into the bag.

“Is that freeze-dried rosemary?” he pulls out the small yellow packet along with the twelve-pack of plain wax candles, leaving a box of Crayola coloured chalk and a package of teriyaki beef jerky inside the back with the crumpled shopping list, bright orange highlighter. It was Dean’s first _sanctioned_ solo excursion since he came to live with Cain, a trip to the market for supplies.

The pale flakes look sickly compared to the bundle of fresh rowan Dean had picked out of Cain’s cupboard earlier.

“You were all out.”

“It’s dead.”

Dean plucks the rosemary from Cain’s fingers, “It was all they had.”

He rips open the package and empties it into another bowl, muttering under his breath about how Cain is a prudish, stiff-necked old tyrant.

Dean’s getting comfortable, starting to realize that Cain won’t actually summon demons to terrorize him if he displays attitude, “If you continue to be this insolent, I’ll postpone this summoning.”

Dean doesn’t look up, flushing from the rebuke, as he taps the bottom of the bag until all of the green flakes fall into the bowl.

Cain reaches out and pinches some of the rosemary between his fingers. It falls to dust. A weak plasticky aroma barely makes it to his nostrils.

“I should have come with you,” Cain says.

Dean swills the bowl to even the flakes across the bottom, “It’s gonna be fine.”

“I don’t mean to be overbearing, Dean. I just don’t want this to go badly.”

“Right, the _foliot_ that you’re letting me summon might break loose, melt my brain and squeeze it out my nostrils into an ice cream cone,” Dean says and does a gimme motion for Cain to toss him the box of chalk. Cain raises an eyebrow pointedly, can see Dean _almost_ roll his eyes as he reaches for it himself.

“A foliot isn’t that creative. It would simply light you on fire.”

“And if that happens, I’ll be out of your hair.”

“ _Dean._ ”

“If there’s anything left of me, find someone who’ll bury me in my car.”

“Dean,” Cain says louder, he pinches the bridge of his nose, “This is needlessly reckless. You must know that.”

“Right, yeah,” Dean replies absently, and then “Actually, _no_. I know what I’m doing.”

“Last week you summoned an imp with a bowl of parsley and shredded dandelions,” Cain recalls the bowl placed at a keystone rune in the circle, surrounded by candles slowly melting into gooey puddles on the floor. He didn’t mention it, mostly because he didn’t realize until Dean started his incantation and he’d noticed the smell of burning herbs was off.

“You didn’t have St. John’s wort. I picked up some of that, too. I told you, _that’s_ what alteration runes are for.”

“It was dangerous.”

“Oh, ye of friggin’ little faith,” Dean mutters at the ceiling and closes his eyes to a god Cain is certain he doesn’t believe in, “What do I have to do to get you to trust me?”

Cain crosses his arms and stares at the robin-egg blue chalk in Dean’s hand. The box doesn’t even come with plain white, another thing that sends up a red flag of concern.

Over the past few weeks, he’s learned more about Dean’s quick, on-the-fly summonings that break every single one of the basic magician’s safety rules: Sketching circles in the dirt on a windy day, forgoing the double-layer of protection sigils on his own circle to thin the barrier between their realm and the spirit realm, substituting sage with mint leaves and hoping the added property runes were enough to satisfy the spirits.

He’s learned that not all of this was Dean’s choice, that Dean has rarely had the luxury of _choice_ , and that at times this was all he was permitted to do.

Most importantly, and somewhat ironically, Dean isn’t actually _fine_ with bringing any kind of entity around him that doesn’t belong. He just happens to be very good at it. And he’s willing to work with Cain to bring Abaddon to heel and banish her to the spirit realm where she ultimately belongs.

There’s something more to it, there’s always something more with Dean. Like where did Dean’s ring come from, what happened to Alastair, why Dean summoned Abaddon in the first place.

And of course – the one topic that hasn’t even come up in  _passing_ between them because Cain fears he might lose all the progress he's made with Dean if he tries – where is Dean’s brother, Sam? Where is the other half of the infamous Winchester duo?

But Cain won’t learn about any of that if he doesn’t believe in this young man, so now _he_ has no choice, for both Dean and himself, but to believe.

Dean’s standing in his circle, ready to start his summoning, candles placed, lit, the smell of rowan slimy and overpowering, with his bowed legs shoulder-width apart, arms crossed over his chest.

Cain’s apprentice is the image of confident, lackadaisical calm.

“Very well, then,” Cain infuses his assent with as much approval as he can manage, steps into his own protective circle, that Dean drew himself, “Whenever you’re ready.”

It’s not the most reassuring, but Dean flashes him a brief smile, gratitude darting across his handsome features before settling back into a mask of determination. He begins the incantation.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Cain’s sofa, with his feet up on the table in front of him despite Cain’s constant admonishing glares, Dean watches impassively as Josie summons demon after demon with such confidence, grace, and ease it sets an uncomfortable worry in the pit of his stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [8 months later]
> 
> changed some tags, added some characters and the major death warning for major in show, not necessarily in fic. and pls don't harsh on my physics, bill nye; i went to school for lit. also, this is a magical AU as in magic exists so, really, i've already thrown scientific plausibility out the window. thanks to [worldturtling](http://archiveofourown.org/users/worldturtling/pseuds/worldturtling) for solving the problem of alastair's last name for me.

The burning ruins of the city block black out the crisp afternoon sky. Daylight seeps between the columns of acrid smoke billowing from blown out windows, vehicles, and a souvenir cart that’s totally engulfed in flames, the owner a charcoal smudge on the sidewalk, and broken glass sparkles on the accumulating ruins, bricks, metal, ash, and bodies.

The last winter he spent at Bobby’s, that’s what it reminds Dean of.

He can see magic everywhere slithering out of its bonds and leaving trails of corruption, warping the planes before it dissipates. The protective barriers built into the walls of the bank on the street corner in particular are reduced to strings of pointless runes that, all mangled and distorted and free, dissolve pieces of the street like acid. A smashed repulsion fields cast over a jewelry store sets off a string of smaller explosions, a shimmering dust left over from the hundreds of gems and precious metals destroyed within.

Just aftershocks, though. None of it compares to the initial explosion.

Dean can hear people crying for help, some of them coherent but most of them just wordless, inhuman noise and he wants to reply, wants to save _someone_ but the grip around his throat is ruthless. His lungs burn on nothing but a bit of smoke, and tears stream down his face, the ash and the fear and the grief mingling and burning his cheeks like tar. His vision shrinks to the hellish blur in front of him, bright red and going blacker every second.

Abaddon laughs savagely and drops him just as his body goes limp. He lands on his hands and knees, shocked back into consciousness. A flash of heat and light washes over his face, and he knows she’s gone.

He calls out, “Sam,” a broken syllable, half-aborted and desperate, clinging. He scrabbles in the debris, fingers already blackened and burned in places from casting and bleeding from dozens of tiny cuts. His sleeves have almost entirely disappeared up to his elbows, his only good pair of jeans now full of holes from falling cinders, and he’s missing a shoe somewhere in the rubble.

Dean waits nine seconds, the time it takes for voice to make it to the other side, and then he says his brother’s name again. And again. When he doesn’t get a reply, he knows it’s either because Sam can’t hear him, or, more likely, Sam is dead.

Ignoring the searing flash burns all over his body, Dean uses the last of his reserves to sit up and makes a final, hysterical decision to kneel here until he dies and his corpse withers and rots and his bones collapse like an old cathedral, staring at the patch of scorched concrete where his brother disappeared.

That last winter he spent at Bobby’s, he thinks about it again. Back when they were still kids, before Dad died, when he gave Sam an atlas and an antique scrying glass. Sam geeked out over the atlas for weeks and came up with an itinerary for the global road trip he eventually wanted to go on with his brother.

Dean’s smile stretches painfully over his face.

The blare of sirens growing nearer sounds like more screaming until its all he can hear, his entire world reduced to the spot on the street where Sam crossed over and the cacophony of alarm that gets into his head and bounces around until he can’t tell what’s real and what’s just an echo. Then there’s hands on him, a bright flashlight on his face, his crooked smile, and someone shouts at him to put his hands behind his back.

Before he gets a chance to, he’s pushed face-down into the street. His mouth fills with ash.

—

The trial was closed to the public, the only audience Dean gets for his sentencing is senior staff and any magician with good enough connections to slip past security. His hands are cuffed below the edge of the table, the magic worked into the metal cold on his barely healed wrists, and his legs are shackled, too. Not that he’s tried to run, but he noticed quickly, through the foggy numbness that’s pervaded him since the explosion, that he can’t so much as look left and right without people reacting in fear.

“Am I correct, Mr. Winchester?” The judge is speaking to him.

His publicly appointed lawyer, Ms. Masters, gives him a look and a quick twitch of her head that says _don’t_ —

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean replies tonelessly.

“You’re confirming your awareness of the laws you’ve broken?”

“Yes."

“You acted in full knowledge that what you were doing was not only against the law, but dangerous to the public?”

Instead of heeding the impatient _tap tap tap_ of his lawyer’s bright purple nails on the wood, the signal for Dean to shut the hell up, he replies, “Yes,” and tilts his chin down. Masters follows the motion to his lap, where he shows off his middle finger.

Masters rolls her eyes and starts shoving papers back into her suitcase.

"Then I don't think I have any choice. Your reckless actions caused widespread damage to four blocks in the business district, over a dozen casualties, and thanks to the demon you released, continues to wreak chaos in the southern regions,” Judge Hudak says, “This is just one provable incident, but your crimes here and your lack of remorse and flippancy alone prove that you’re a danger to society. The only course of action I believe is reasonable is prison time.”

Dean stares numbly at the wall just above the judge’s head.

“Twenty-five years in a maximum security facility,” the judge declares and lifts her gavel just as a bailiff approaches the podium from the side and hands her a small slip of paper. She unfolds it, reads it to herself, with one eyebrow rising high into her bangs.

“Mr. Keeper, This is…not a request the law can tolerate,” she points her gaze to the galleries above. Amidst the lazy swirl of emotions in Dean’s mind, he focuses on the name Keeper and tries to figure out where he’s heard it before, and whether he should be interested or not.

“Madame Justice, I would like you to put aside the law’s demand for vengeance and consider the necessity,” a slow, calm voice explains.

Dean turns his head slowly to see a shabby looking bearded man with wavy salt and pepper hair and deep, clear eyes standing in the aisle. His suit is brown, faded in spots, and hasn’t been ironed since the last time it was worn, which Dean guesses is sometime in the late nineties.

The state attorney across the aisle from Dean pipes up, “He’s dangerous. He murdered his previous master and that alone should carry the death sentence, not prison time,” he says.

“Rumours surrounding the death of Alastair Crimmings are not the concern of this trial, Mr. Campbell.”

The mood in the room swells close to that of a mob. Dean flicks his eyes to the judge and makes eye contact with her for the first time since entering the room. She holds his gaze with piercing grey eyes, the expression in her mouth indecipherable but her silence is not.

The bailiff approaches her and speaks up cautiously, “Madame Justice, you can’t consider letting him walk free.”

The man in the aisle clears his throat, “He wouldn’t be free,” he clarifies, “He would be under my watch, constantly, living according to my household rules and bound to my property by magic,” he says, “He would still be a prisoner, but he would be working with me to repair some of the damage caused by his crimes.”

“But you would call him your _apprentice_?” The judge says, disbelieving, “Mr. Keeper, you have a reputation to uphold, and this would ruin it.”

The old man shrugs, utterly neutral, “There’s not much left to ruin, Madame Justice.”

—

Dean is accustomed to beds that smell slept in and used. Nameless, generic motel beds scattered across the country that smell like traffic, the stink of old buildings, dirty streets, and the same laundry smells atop it all: bleach, fabric softener, thick choking fumes that hang over him as he sleeps and burn his lungs. He’s used to waking with a sting in his throat and blaming it on the chemicals used to clean spit, semen, and blood out of the motel sheets. He’s used to waking in a new place every day.

When he wakes up, the air smells like musty old wallpaper instead of generic brand Mr. Clean, and the comforters feel stiff and new instead of thin and over-washed. Outside the window, he hears the birds chirp merrily instead of freeway traffic and sirens blaring down the street.

His throat stings, but he knows it’s not from the smells.

Somewhere else in this building, the sound of a violin.

They let him keep a bag of clothes, his car, and his dad’s journal. His gun and his phones are gone. One of them discarded like a cheap toy by Abaddon, the others confiscated after he was arrested. He lays a hand on the journal as if some comfort, some guidance might rise up from the leather cover. Nothing happens, but he’s not all that surprised.

The hallway is empty. The only light pours in from the window on the far end, a rectangle of yellow that hits the wall at an angle, spreading it down the hall. He steps out lightly but his toes crunch on the old, thin carpet as he walks towards the sounds coming from below, and the mighty creak the stairs give when his full weight comes down on the top step puts a stop to the violin music.

His new master steps into the foyer, bow still in hand. Dean grips the dark banister.

“Good morning,” Cain Keeper says rigidly, “Although I suppose it _is_ closer to dusk. You slept a long time.”

Dean freezes with one foot on the top step and looks over the magician’s shoulder. The front door is behind Cain and, beyond that, Dean’s car. But the keys are in Cain’s possession, and the spelled shackle around his ankle — he hasn’t figured out exactly what it does yet, but it might do more than stunt his magic if he tries to make a break for it. Last thing he needs is to blow off his foot in a carelessly conceived escape plot.

He puts it on his mental to-do list.

“I’m sorry I didn’t wake you. I thought you might need to rest for a day.”

Dean’s never appreciated fake concern, “I’ll set an alarm,” he replies coldly.

After a moment of uncomfortable consideration, Cain turns and beckons Dean to follow.

“Even if you insist on beginning your training today, I don’t. It’s Sunday.”

Dean makes a derisive noise, a snort that slips out before he can check it at one of his filters.

Cain ignores it, however, and leads Dean into a small salon with a fireplace that’s crackling sharply, “Sit.”

For a moment, Dean considers disobeying, and what might happen if he does. He’s not a defenseless untrained boy anymore, and Cain is far too old to be a physical threat to Dean if it comes to that. Moreover, Dean’s seen and done things since his first apprenticeship that fade some of the horrors his old master put him through, things that take the sharpness out of some of the potential punishments he might face for disobedience.

Not all of them, but a lot of them.

Generally speaking, whatever Cain might do to Dean, Dean’s probably already been through worse.

He flexes his bare toes on the floor and avoids Cain’s eyes while he decides what to do, but his gaze falls instead on the elegant looking tray laid out on the table: two mugs and a pot of tea, a small stack of sandwiches, and a plate of cookies. His stomach growls at the sight of food; the last meal he had was before the trial.

After three sandwiches and thirty minutes of tense silence, Dean spins his mother’s ring around his finger, and he waits for Cain to speak whatever nonsense it is that compelled him to bring Dean here in the first place.

—

There’s something that Dean’s father used to say all the time, something that confused Dean when he was a child but made more and more sense as he grew older, saw more, and did more: All magicians are the same.

John Winchester was not a magician; He was born into a family of commoners. Historians, writers, archivists, well-read individuals but commoners nonetheless. Surrounded by people whose sole prescribed duty to society was to record the exploits of greater men, John’s childhood was one of hidden resentment toward magicians, a youth coloured by the injustice of knowing what was possible for men to achieve, but being unable to attain it simply because he was born to the wrong family. And the resentment grew in knowing what magicians, with all their privilege, chose to pursue instead.

Mary Campbell, John’s wife, _was_ a magician of an old, well-renowned heritage. It’s still a mystery to Dean how they ended up courting one another, with John’s hatred running so deep. But it happened, and they had two children.

The second page in John’s journal has an old photograph of the four of them together: John, Mary, Dean, and Sam. The colours are faded, but Dean’s hair is still baby blond in the photo. He drags his finger down the edge of it, tape curling away from the paper from age, and makes a mental note to find more in the morning.

Leaving the book open on his mattress, he starts to undress, his clothes still cold and damp and clinging from the rain. Dean sniffles and regrets for a moment that he stormed out of the bar the way he did. The patrons will be talking about it for weeks and Crowley will attach himself gleefully to the idea of Dean being heeled like that.

Then again, if he hadn’t been as stubborn, then Cain might not have told him the truth. Dean had nothing when he walked into Crowley’s place, and through his obstinacy he now has something.

Still, he’s going to be sick by morning and Cain will tell him to drink tea.

It hasn’t quite sunk in yet. Or maybe because he’s chilly and tired and just wants to go to sleep, Dean can’t find the energy to be too pissed off about the way the old magician gripped that steering wheel and told Dean, in dead tones, of his own greatest failure.

Abaddon was once human, once Cain’s apprentice in fact, until things went awry in a typical but still unprecedented way. By the sounds of it, Cain had a hand in making her what she became, stoking her ambitions with his own until the two of them meddled with magic that warped her into something non-human, something that only cared for destruction and power and how much she could attain through whatever means were most effective.

The only part of Cain’s confession that really mattered to Dean is that normal bindings don’t work on her because she’s not a normal spirit. Her essence matches that of a human more than a demon.

She can be defeated, she can be brought down. Dean just had to take a different approach.

He’s just finished pulling an old but gratefully dry Zeppelin t-shirt over his head. Someone knocks gently at Dean’s door.

“Come in.”

Cain enters with his gaze lowered, strands of hair hanging limp around his face. A saucer with a cup of tea in his hands clinks gently as he holds it out, “You should drink this tonight so you don’t wake up with a cold tomorrow. I’m not going to postpone your lessons either way since you broke the conditions of your apprenticeship on your own accord,” he explains, “But I would rather not have you sneezing all over my books.”

The gesture is both surprising, but as soon as that thought sharpens in Dean’s mind, he understands that it really isn’t. Cain has not shown any interest in making Dean miserable here. There’s been nothing so far to suggest that Cain thinks of Dean as anything but a pupil. Not a prisoner, not a servant, not a plaything.

From where he stands, Dean can smell the pungent beverage, but he’s grateful for the concern and everything it signifies anyhow. He sniffles, takes the tea and places it on his night table. John’s journal is still open on his bed, but Cain knows better than to ask.

“What happened tonight. Me running away,” Dean’s never really considered himself overly prideful, _but magicians are all the same, aren’t they, Dad? “S_ orry I did that.”

“Apology accepted.”

Dean’s mouth pulls into a timid smile, “Can’t promise it’ll be the last time.”

Cain doesn’t smile back, but nods, “I didn’t expect it would be.”

—

Dean’s initial summonings with Cain are laughably easy, but Dean doesn’t joke around, for the most part. The first imp he summons is a squat, cartoonish creature with eyes far too large for its head and a tail that scrapes along the edge of the circle, sparking and stinging the demon for trying to break through. It blows a raspberry at Cain, and Cain simply glowers and says nothing, doesn’t even flinch.

That makes it even funnier.

For the most part, however, Dean approaches his summonings the same as he would if Cain weren’t in the room with him: seriously, sternly. He still does things his way, much to Cain’s displeasure. Cain criticizes Dean’s choice of words and eyes his circles with skepticism, but he must trust that Dean knows what he’s doing, to some extent.

The first djinn Cain chooses for Dean to summon, however, Dean turns him down.

“What’s wrong with this one?”

Dean scans the previous page for something else, but almost everybody listed is a half-assed excuse for a demon, none of whom who have been summoned in the past eight-hundred years and would get hit trying to cross a busy street even with all their advanced senses, “I don’t wanna get into it.”

“You’ve summoned it before?”

Dean pauses on the name Baruchiel and tries to think of a good nickname — Barry — while he does what he can to drift over Cain’s question without giving it away on his face. Over the past few weeks, he’s revealed more to Cain, but he’s also kept a lot secret. He knows the old man is intelligent, though, and has figured out a lot for himself. Dean’s silences are damning.

Without looking up from writing his notes, “I haven’t. My brother has.”

At the brushing mention of his brother, Dean feels a sudden chill clamp around his heart, his hands twitch and the pen jerks. He stills himself and takes a breath, knowing that the old man has already registered what just happened, but, like always, he doesn’t press Dean for answers.

Not about Sam, at least.

“Something went wrong with this spirit.”

“You could say that,” Dean glances down at the almanac again. It’s outdated, at least as far as the past ten years go, but each entry has followed virtually the same format for thousands of years. The spirit’s name, their class and level, and their temperament. Aggressive, complaining, punctual, lazy, and so on. And then, of course, there’s a brief history of the spirit’s exploits to give a potential summoner an idea of what kinds of grudges or allegiances, if any, a spirit might harbour. Sam chose this one because of its obedience, its track record of getting the job done, and it’s neutrality towards any kind of work.

Castiel got the job done. But he didn’t remain neutral.

It seems odd that a creature thousands of years old could change on a dime, but it happened.

“I don’t want to summon Castiel. End of story,” Dean says as calmly as possible, picks up his pen again, crosses the entry out, and turns the page.

—

The lights flicker in Cain’s dark office when Dean walks in for his lessons one day about a week after his escape to the bar, but it’s nothing of a demonic nature. Just his master wrestling with a finicky old film projector, a black and white still image of a pale young woman holding a pile of books and beaming at whoever is filming her plastered along the blank wall. Recognition freezes Dean to the spot, so he watches from the doorway as Cain curses and hits the side of the projector with his hand, jostling the image of the girl sharply to the left.

“Need help?” Dean’s voice is steadier than he feels.

Cain looks up immediately with a frown on his face, “I won’t be mocked.”

“I’m just offering,” Dean replies defensively.

Standing back, the older magician wipes his forehead with the cuff of his sleeve and gives Dean a cautious side-eye, “You...you know how to work one of these?”

Dean rolls his eyes, gets his feet moving, and takes over. He gives the machine the once-over before figuring out what goes where, and how it all works to make the image on the screen start to move in a forward direction. It’s up and running in less than two minutes, but Cain says nothing as Dean throws him a look, and then seats himself on the sofa and crosses his arms over his chest, and watches the film play.

Dean’s struck mostly by how ordinary Abaddon — Josie, Cain tells him her human name was Josie Sands — seems. She’s young, on the boundary between a child and an adult. Cain explains how Josie came to apprentice under him when she was sixteen, and Dean can see it in her eyes, a youthful excitement at each successful summoning.

She has green eyes, Dean remembers them vividly as she stared him down, cruel twist to her bright red mouth. Green eyes, red hair, red mouth. He sees nothing of the monster Josie became in the young woman on the screen.

The sound is scratchy, but she chatters constantly.

“There’s enough rowan to summon more than one into the circle.”

“I’ve doubled the thickness of the pentacle, Master.”

“If I add another bowl of rosemary to the outer edge I believe it will subdue the djinn’s will quicker.”

On Cain’s sofa, with his feet up on the table in front of him despite Cain’s constant admonishing glares, Dean watches impassively as Josie summons demon after demon with such confidence, grace, and ease it sets an uncomfortable worry in the pit of his stomach. Obvious differences notwithstanding, Josie reminds him just a bit too much of Sam.

“She was remarkable,” Cain’s voice is slow and clear over the poor sound quality of the film. He’s standing behind the sofa with his hands braced on the back, staring neutrally at the projection, “Charming, ambitious, and skilled beyond her years. Josie was any magician’s dream apprentice. Her fame increased my own.”

Dean grunts and shifts in his seat, and waits for the inevitable disaster.

“Her practical work was flawless but her theories…”

Dean stiffens suddenly and sits forward as the camera pans over Josie’s shoulder at her notes. The scribblings. however neatly written, are mostly indistinct through the grain of the film, but Dean recognizes some familiar patterns and some diagrams and examples that churn up bile in his stomach as he makes a connection in his mind that he’s tried to bury and deny. His voice goes without him, speaking in a trance-like tone, “She tried to cross over.”

The film flickers to an end, a blackness enveloping the room that’s cut by the slivers of light through the blinds over the window. Cain walks over to the projector and stops its fruitless turning, his hunched silhouette traced in white.

“She didn’t just try.”

—

Dean flicks through his dad’s journal when Cain dismisses him later that day. It’s only two in the afternoon, but after watching the films of a young, human Abaddon doing a lot of the same things that any apprentice does under a master magician, his concentration was cracked down the middle.

“When’s the last time on record an elemental sphere was used offensively?” Cain commands rather suddenly while Dean is busy scratching out a part of a translation for the third time. His pen rips through the page and he swears.

Dean looks up at Cain with a glare, “1998.”

Cain smirks, “That was accidentally.”

Dean scowls and goes back to his work, mimicking Cain’s snotty tone under his breath.

There’s a sigh from the old man less than a minute later, “You’re not focused. This is the longest it’s taken you to translate anything in any language, you won’t stop tapping your feet against the side of my desk, and you keep staring at the ceiling.”

“It’s a nice ceiling.”

“Dean,” Cain says slowly, “Stop acting like a child and take my meaning. You need a break to let things sink in.”

In his room, he’s no less agitated and poring through John’s journal does nothing to settle the tight pain in his gut. He’s memorized what John wrote on each page, both he and Sam adding notes and corrections as they discovered more after John’s death. How to bind a djinn without a circle, how to summon a spirit that’s already in this world, how to determine which realm a demon is in without trying to summon them first. It’s all there, the kinds of tricks and spells Dean’s never seen in any textbook. John hated magicians and he hated demons more, but he knew so much about them and he taught his sons everything he knew about them, but he couldn’t keep them from forming their own opinions.

He couldn’t keep either of them from resenting his hypocrisy.

Dean finds the page on essence transference. A quirk in the deep, dirty physics of summoning that most magicians don’t bother to learn about because its relevance strays too far into the theoretical, and theoreticals are hazardous. John only knew it because John’s family business was in knowing.

Sam was better at reading up on this kind of thing, more into the technical language but the way Dean understands it is just as effective: It’s possible to summon a spirit to the mortal realm using some fancy words, a chalk circle, and a pile of herbs because most things in the mortal realm can operate comfortably in three spatial dimensions and one of time. Spirits don’t like this world, but they are capable of surviving for a fairly long time because their essence can manifest in that limited number of dimensions.

The other way around, though, it doesn’t work as well, not even close. Sam was never able to determine a number, but if there were a limit to however many dimensions there were in the spirit realm, it was no quantity that the human essence could cope with for very long.

Dean’s hand goes to his left shoulder quickly, like reading through the process of transference is enough to put him back there.

That _pull_ that tore him into atoms, it goes beyond agony, indefinable. He never told Sam how much it hurt. He couldn’t recall the exact feeling even if he wanted to.

He also never told him that it still feels like a part of him was left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also since i'm not sure if this is going to turn people off or on, the dean/cain in this fic will remain platonic. dean is asexual and gay, but that'll come up with a different relationship later on.


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